Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions

We have taken major strides forward in our efforts to become a leader in Israel and around the world in the management and reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Since 2008, our organization has measured the GHG emissions of its facilities in Israel. As of 2010, we annually perform a comprehensive review of our GHG inventory worldwide, including 57 global facilities and main offices (almost the entire span of ICL global production). In parallel, we continue to make progress in the measurement of the carbon footprint of our products, a project that now includes approximately 60 of our leading products. Our calculations are supported and reviewed by SKM-Enviros, a London-based leading consultancy in the climate change management field.
We also ask our suppliers to calculate the carbon footprint of their products which we use in our production processes.

We annually report the emissions and our efforts in the climate change field to the CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project), an independent non-profit organization driving the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. As a result of our comprehensive reporting and efforts, the CDP has awarded us a disclosure score of 99 (out of 100) for our 2015 report *, and a score of 98 in 2013-4. The 2015 score is the highest disclosure score ever achieved by any Israeli-based company, is among the top 120 scores (or top 6%) of all global companies in 2015, and is also tied for second-best among global fertilizer-producing companies. Also, due to our efforts to reduce the organizations’ GHG emissions, ICL has achieved in 2015 the high performance ranking of ‘B’ (in a descending A-E scale). In 2014, ICL was also included in the CDP CPLI (Carbon Performance Leadership Index) – an exclusive list of global companies that have excelled in emission reduction and climate change mitigation. ICL is the only Israeli company that was included in the exclusive CPLI list so far.

In addition to reporting our GHG emissions balance to the CDP, we are one of the first Israeli companies to report our emissions to the voluntary GHG registry established by Israel’s Ministry of Environmental Protection, and are contributing from our experience to the development of the registry through constant dialogue with the ministry’s representatives.
Following are the main initiatives taken so far, which have allowed ICL to achieve such significant reductions in GHG emissions:

Converting our production plants in Israel to the use of natural gas:Natural gas offers many environmental benefits, including lower emission of greenhouse gases per unit of energy produced.

Increasing energy efficiency:We are phasing out inefficient production technologies, streamlining our production facilities, increasing the efficiency of our consumption of heat and steam, using residual heat and reducing our consumption from lighting and air conditioning.

Eliminating or reducing process GHG emissions:Our replacement of SF6, a protective gas used in magnesium production, with HFC134a, a gas with a significantly lower global warming potential, was the key factor in reducing the total GHG emissions at our Dead Sea Magnesium plant by approx. 75% (in CO2e terms) . We have also implemented an innovative system which has reduced our nitrous oxide emissions at the ICL Haifa (F&C) plant by 60% per ton nitric acid produced.

The combined effect of these efforts has resulted in a 40% reduction in our global GHG emissions between 2008 and 2015.